Monday, June 17, 2019

Walker milks his governorship as WI dairy farmers go under

One divide in Wisconsin is between those eager to cruise away from cold, hard work, and those who can't.

Begin with 
a brutal fact buried in this heart-breaking account of one Wisconsin dairy farming family's fight for survival:  
The rate of dairy closures has increased from two per day in Wisconsin in 2018 to three per day in 2019 so far.
File:Confined-animal-feeding-operation.jpg 
Falling prices, expanding industrial-scale competitors and harsh weather keep grinding down dairy farmers like Ryan Dunnum:

The weight of dairy market volatility started to feel overwhelming in January, he said, after frigid temperatures caused the [milking] parlor pipes to freeze...
You can add this disaster in rural Wisconsin - - and the chronic deer wasting plague that spread across the state during his tenure - - to special-interest friendly toxic legacies Walker will not showcase on his far-flung junkets or at paid speaking gigs.

And while the hard working Wisconsinites Walker so often used as rhetorical props face broken dreams and frozen pipes back home, Walker will be on the  high-end-escape-Wisconsin 
warm weather ocean cruise he's been shilling for all year:
After experiencing 21 degrees below zero at the end of January this year, we are ready to go some place warm!  
We invite you to join us on this amazing adventure to Hawaii from January 29 to February 9.
I also could not help but notice that dairy farmer Dunnum said that even after selling most of his herd and diversifying his business he still needs about $25,000 to keep going - - which is what Walker can make in a single speech.
Walker's speaking fee: $25,000
Which is Walker's right, but note in this June 13th tweet how quick he is to take a partisan shot at others he thinks are insensitive to disparities in wealth and income:
Members of Congress like who make $174,000 (more than 3 times the median household income) want a pay increase? Out-of-touch! 

2 comments:

joerossm said...

Hilarious to see Walker rip AOC when his buddy Sean Duffy complained about his salary years ago:
https://thinkprogress.org/rep-sean-duffy-complains-about-his-174-000-salary-i-drive-a-used-minivan-a717019b8e7c/

Man MKE said...

And what was Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's rationale for supporting a pay increase for House members? This: "Voting against cost of living increases for members of Congress may sound nice, but doing so only increases pressure on them to keep dark money loopholes open." The interesting fact that Walker ignores in attacking here is that one of his GOP fellow travelers, right winger House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy agreed with Democrats like AOC. McCarthy said, "I do not want Congress at the end of the day to only be a place that millionaires serve; this should be a body of the people."